Robert McNamara, the unapologetic architect of the Vietnam War
The former secretary of defense defended the decisions and geopolitical circumstances that brought us the war in Vietnam -- a war he knew was unwinnable long before anyone else.
The whys of war
May 9, 1999
In some ways, Robert Strange McNamara is one of the last soldiers still fighting the Vietnam War.
As secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson from 1961 to 1968, he was a key decision-maker in America's futile effort to keep South Vietnam from falling to Communist North Vietnam.
The killing and bombing in Vietnam stopped long ago. But on the home front, the debate over our war there still rages.
Did America really have to fight in South Vietnam to halt the spread of world communism, to keep the other countries of Southeast Asia — President Eisenhower's "dominos" — from falling?
Did America lose its first war because it was never winnable?
Or was it because our timid political leaders didn't allow the generals to fight it to win?
It was McNamara himself who in 1995 reignited the Vietnam debate and ended 27 years of his silence on the issue by publishing his memoirs, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam."
In his best-selling version of how we slowly sunk into a quagmire that would cost the lives of 58,000 Americans and nearly 4 million Vietnamese, he admitted that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made "terribly wrong" decisions. But he said they were made because of errors of "judgment and capabilities," not errors of "values and intentions."
McNamara (who died in 2009 at age 93) was singled out for a great deal of criticism in H.R. McMaster's 1997 book, "Dereliction of Duty."
McMaster used declassified memos and other documents to make his case that the Vietnam War was fought and ultimately lost because of the arrogance, self-interested lying and irresponsibility of President Johnson's top military and civilian advisers.
The jury is still out and still arguing over Vietnam. To borrow the title of Mc-Namara's new book, Vietnam will probably always be an "Argument Without End."
A collaboration with four scholars of the Vietnam War, the book (published by PublicAffairs) is based on the first-ever meetings between the American and Vietnamese leaders who made their countries' war-time decisions.
"Argument Without End' points to lessons from Vietnam that are applicable to the future, for today and tomorrow," says McNamara. "That's the purpose of it."
McNamara, who is coming to Pittsburgh May 19 to speak at the Post-Gazette Book and Author Dinner, was interviewed by Post Gazette staff writer Bill Steigerwald.
Historical note: At one point in this interview, Mr. McNamara got a little testy with me. He said something to the effect that a few of my questions were too rough on him for prosecuting the war long after he realized it was unwinnable. I don’t remember exactly what I asked him or how he answered, and I make no claim of having been a junior tough-guy interviewer a la Mike Wallace. But those “meaner” questions I asked are lost forever. They were cut out of this interview by the PG’s editorial page editors (no doubt because McNamara was the star attraction at the PG Book and Author Dinner). And since I’ve lost the original transcript, I can’t include the missing Qs and As in this version.
— Bill s.
Robert S. McNamara
Q: The book "Dereliction of Duty" takes a tough look at you and your role in Vietnam policy. It makes the argument that the war was not inevitable and not a result of larger geopolitical concerns, Cold War concerns, but was a result of decisions made by top people in government — McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk and especially you. What is your reaction?
A: I don't want to comment on the book, but I'll comment on the points you've made that the war was not a result of geopolitical concerns. That's just absolutely false. Read George Herring, read Stanley Karnow — the outstanding historians of the Vietnam War put absolutely no credence in that argument.
The CIA stated in estimate after estimate that in effect Eisenhower was right: If we, the West, particularly the United States, lost an independent South Vietnam to control by the Communists, this would so strengthen the Chinese Communists and Russian Communists as to permit the extension of their hegemony, the expansion of their control, into east and south Asia. This is on the record.
It was not a decision by the Kennedy administration or the Johnson administration that was unique to those administrations. This was in effect what Eisenhower pointed to in 1954 and was what Nixon fought the war for.
So I think it was for geopolitical reasons that we were there. What I think your audience today is probably not familiar with is that both during the Eisenhower administrations and Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the pressure of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact on the security of the West was very, very great indeed.
You'll remember that the Soviets had put the first man in space, and it was alleged that they had a lead in missiles — they didn't, but that was alleged. Khrushchev had said "we will bury you" and in August '61 there was strong military pressure from the Soviets to try to take West Berlin away from NATO. We damn near came to war over that.
In October 1962 we almost had nuclear war over the introduction of Soviet nuclear warheads into Cuba. And in June 1967, the first time the hotline was ever used, Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin engaged in a series of message exchanges with President Johnson and one of the messages from Kosygin said in effect, "If you want war, you'll get it." And of course there were a lot of harsh statements in the meantime. It was a period of confrontation. The record is very, very clear.
Now, did we properly judge the Soviet and Chinese intent to expand in the east and south Asia? And if they did have the intent, did we properly judge their capability? I think those are good questions and my answer would be: probably not.
But if you go back to the time and recognize how close we came to war on several occasions during that period, I think you'll understand why these four administrations — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon — all feared the loss of South Vietnam to Communist control.
Q: Could the Vietnam War have been won?
A: This is a very interesting point, and I'm not going to give you my answer, because I was a part of the decision-making of the application of military power. I simply want to say that Chapter 7 of this new book, "Argument Without End," poses just exactly that question: Could the war have been won?
The chapter is written by Col. Herbert Schandler, who is a West Point graduate, fought two tours in Vietnam as an infantry commander, took a Ph.D. at Harvard, and has written books and articles on it, and for years has been a professor of military strategy at the National Defense University.
Here it is on Page 369: He says, "The American failure in Vietnam was not a failure caused by the limitations placed on military action. Indeed, overwhelming military power was brought to bear and the United States enjoyed complete control of the sea and air and had a striking superiority in materiel, weapons and mobility on the ground. The American failure was caused by a lack of realization that military power could not solve what was fundamentally a political problem."
Earlier in the chapter, he expands on that. On Page 318, he says, "The evidence points to the conclusion that to believe the U.S. military was denied a victory it could have and should have won in Vietnam is an illusion — a dangerous illusion if acted upon in Mure U.S. conflicts." [Author's italics.]
Q: Is that a lesson that the country should have learned from Vietnam?
A: Yes, yes. It is indeed.
Q: Has the country learned that lesson?
A: No, it has not. I think the conventional wisdom today is that we could have won.
Q: If we had applied the right force at the right time in the right way.
A: Correct. Schandler says, in a further elaboration of the sentences I read you, that there was no way to win short of the U.S. committing genocide and running a major risk of a major war with China and Russia. This is why this book is important, by the way. Was it possible to have won a military victory? The answer is absolutely no. That's what Schandler says.
And then we examine other possibilities. The hypotheses I wanted to see U.S. and Vietnamese military, diplomatic and political leaders of the 1960s discuss, which we did at these meetings in and around Hanoi, was that either the U.S. or North Vietnam could have avoided the war entirely or we could have terminated it on a number of occasions without any change in the geopolitical balance at the end of the war. We missed opportunities to avoid the war or terminate it. I listed several potential opportunities -r a neutral Vietnam, a negotiated settlement, a possible military victory, etc.
We engaged in those debates. They were quite shocking at times. They were very, very combative at times. Initially, the North Vietnamese we met with said, "Yes, there were such possibilities to end the war, but it was only the U.S. that missed the opportunities. We Vietnamese missed no opportunities."
In the end, they said, "You're right, we missed opportunities, too." Now, what they are prepared to say and what the book quotes them as saying, is, Yes they see they missed opportunities to avoid the war or terminate it, as did we.
Q: So the lesson is that you should talk to your adversary?
A: Yes. We didn't talk. In the seven years I was secretary with the Kennedy and Johnson administration there wasn't seven minutes of direct communication between Kennedy and Johnson on the one hand and President Ho Chi Minn and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong on the other. Or any single personal representative of them. That was a serious error.
Q: You have a unique position that is amazing: You have been involved in a major war and are now able to assess it and reassess it and talk to the people involved afterwards. What does it tell you about the nature of war? Either how wars get started or how they continue or why they … ?
A: Wars start for different reasons. If you look at Rwanda, Burundi, for example, where a huge number of people — close to a million, I think were killed — that started because of old tribal rivalries I think. The Vietnam War was different. It started because of misunderstandings.
Q: But no war is simple.
A: No, no. You are absolutely correct.
Q: And people usually go to war with people they either hate for a long time or don't know anything about.
A: Yes, I think it's particularly important that you put in the second point. We didn't hate the Vietnamese. We didn't know them. That's inexcusable. The lessons of Vietnam, summarized in the last chapter of the book, apply today to Kosovo. If we heed them, they should help us shorten the war there